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I would like to address "growing student interest in creative writing" from a K-12 perspective. I don't think it is unique to higher education. In English or Language arts classes, K-12 teachers have young scholars read and examine literature of all kinds and then in some cases create their own. Many K-12 schools have literary magazines and journals and encourage their scholars to submit their work to local and national contests or to simply submit them to magazines that publish K-12 work. This is a very and too often selective process designed for too few. What I find more useful is the practice of having the schools provide webspace for all of their scholars and have all of the scholars engage in creative writing in addition to the standard fare. It is my belief that the scholars should publish their work on line, then the global community has access. In the spirit of scholarship, the first part is realized and that is publication or making ones work public. The second tenet of scholarship could then begin and that is peer review. Thirdly, the passing on of our scholarship is then going to happen.

This practice was performed by me at my NYC public school since 1994 and is part of my continuing work with training teachers and scholars to use the web for their work. The purpose of the use of the web to publish our scholars’ work is first to counter the high stakes tests as the only form of assessment, secondly to help our scholars build a webfolio of their work for college or work, and thirdly to provide a way for critics of education to see exactly what we do and to provide them a means to become involved in K-12 education on a more practical level than on the current theoretical and abstract level of using high stakes tests and numbers that mean little. Rather than being told about the state of K-12 education, the webfolio allows all to actually get involved if they choose, but more importantly to actually see the work being done. What webfolios do for K-12 education is show that one size fits all tests are not the answer to improving K-12 education, but instead provide a means to involve the public and engage them in the process of actually helping scholarship flourish in our schools. Creative writing is just one area where the scholars will benefit. All areas of communication and therefore literacy will abound as webfolios are created and the public becomes more aware of what is actually happening in our schools instead of relying on abstract numbers and sensational reporting. This is beneficial for not only creative writing but literacy in general and education specifically.

: -- Ted Nellen, Cybrarain, Alternative HS, NYC, http://www.tnellen.com/ted/ (posted 3/11, 1:30 p.m., U.S. Eastern time)

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